History BA(Hons)

This module will focus on the political and social histories of a number of case studies considering the period from the end of the nineteenth century until the eve of the Second World War. Typical countries you will cover include a selection from a range of European and world powers including the USSR, the USA and France. In each case you will focus on the main political themes of the era such as democracy, fascism and communism and then consider them in wider social and cultural contexts. You will receive skills training integrated within the module.

Critical thinking enables us to go beyond the surface of information, using analytical skills to dissect, question, and evaluate ideas with a detective's curiosity and a scientist's precision. This skillset is common to all disciplines in the Humanities, where the challenge lies in unravelling complexities, probing assumptions, and exploring the neglected features of human culture, language and history. The module will hone your intellectual skills in reasoning and close analysis, improve your ability to present arguments effectively, and equip you to plan and conduct an independent research project. This module will also provide support for planning your personal and career development.

This module looks at sources and approaches to the study of the medieval and early modern eras taken broadly to cover the period 1400-1800. This is a survey module deliberately covering a long chronological span enabling students to look at key aspects of the period. It will focus on England/Britain in relation to the wider world e.g. examining the Black Death as a Europe-wide pandemic, focusing on sources relating to the impact on the British Isles; The role of the monarchy in government; the impact of exploration on developing views of the world and the connection between empire and enslavement. It will take a thematic approach examining politics, society, and religion using case studies to highlight these. It will examine the sources that students can use to engage with medieval and early modern history from written and pictorial sources to examining museums.

This module explores the Crusades to the Holy Land from the late 11th to mid-13th Centuries in the context of contemporary political, social and religious developments in Western Europe and the Middle East. You'll be directed to different accounts of the Crusades in contemporary sources from the perspective of the crusaders themselves, as well as from the point of view of the Jewish, Islamic and Byzantine peoples who were affected by the influx of Western Europeans to the Eastern Mediterranean. You'll also have the opportunity to examine crusading activities within Europe (e.g. Spain and the Baltic).

This module examines the history, memory and historiographical controversy surrounding the Nazi era in European History. You will use a broad range of primary and secondary source material to develop a deep historical analysis of the era, rooted in the debates over the consent or coercion of the German population, the limits of the totalitarian model and the nature of victimhood and commemoration. This module falls into the ‘Conflict’ and ‘Communities and Welfare’ research groups.

‘Refugees in Modern World History’ explores the political, social, legal, cultural and emotional history of refugees in the Twentieth Century. It uses the buoyant historical scholarship in refugee studies as well as new archival collections, including those at the Holocaust Learning and Exhibition Centre, to ask how we can capture the refugee ‘voice’ in history and how this can help us reflect on the experience of displacement. It also contextualises current notions of a ‘refugee crisis’ and the contested memory of refugee history in the media.

This module deals with the theory and practice of oral history in relation to the history of childhood and youth. You'll conduct at least one interview, and provide all the relevant ethical and archival documentation to accompany it. You'll be introduced to the key problems in oral history of memory, ethics, intersubjectivity and narrative. Finally, in order to write about the experience of childhood and youth in the past, you'll learn the analytical techniques which can be applied to oral history data.

This module focuses on the potential of spoken-word material as a source of data for quantitative and qualitative research in the study of History, English Language and Literature. It aims to improve your skills in data collection through the introduction of the theory and practice of interviewing for research, and aims to enhance your analytical skill set by introducing you to a range of methods from like thematic tagging, concordances, and descriptive and analytical statistics. You will explore the interview as a means of data collection in, for example, sociolinguistics and oral history, conducting your own interviews in line with best practice. You will then use spoken-word data collected by yourself or other scholars as the basis for investigation of textual material using a variety of analytical tools.

You will study the origins of the war, the military course of the conflict, its effect on domestic society and reactions to the war through literature, art and memorial architecture. The focus of the module is on the British experience, though it will consider continental European and imperial experiences too. Throughout the module, you will also reflect upon public commemoration across the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

This module examines the history and memory of the French experience of World War II, focusing on the German Occupation, the Vichy Regime, French collaboration, and the development of internal and external resistance. You will use a broad range of primary and secondary source material to develop a cultural historical analysis of the era, rooted in the debates over silence, truth and representation. This module falls into the ‘Conflict’ and ‘Communities and Welfare’ research groups.

On this module you will study the aftermaths of the First World War and attempts at peacebuilding and post-war reconstruction. You will also consider the idea of the ‘Greater War’ to examine conflicts that extended beyond the armistice in 1918. You will investigate the work of new international organisations such as the League of Nations and Save the Children Fund in this period of conflict and flux, as well as the experiences of individuals and cultural responses. The module’s geographical focus is Britain, but this is set in the context of international movements and global challenges.

This is a specialised module which engages you, through the study of primary and secondary sources, in examining the reign of Elizabeth I (1558-1603). It aims to develop your understanding of key themes in the early modern era, such as gender, politics, foreign policy and religion.

This module will develop your understanding of the history of late nineteenth and early twentieth century Britain by examining the relationship between the human body and the urban environment. It addresses the key question - how important is the human body to understanding history? To answer this question we’ll examine a range of different aspects of British social, cultural and health history.

On this module we will study the Holocaust through the words of those who survived and/or bore witness to it. Bringing together both literary and historical perspectives, we will approach this bleak yet defining episode of human history in a unique interdisciplinary fashion, focusing on non-fictional texts such as memoirs, diaries, and verbatim theatre. By studying how those who witnessed the events of the Holocaust chose to put the experience into words, we will attempt to understand these events neither in terms of traditional history textbooks nor in terms of their representation in our culture, but in terms of some of the individual stories behind it. This will allow us better to grasp issues such as trauma, memorialisation, the relationship between testimony and truth, and the difficulties involved in putting the events of the Holocaust into words.